


'Til the end of the line

by sweptawaybayou



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 07:09:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9373685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweptawaybayou/pseuds/sweptawaybayou
Summary: for prompt #431 ~ Broken Promise at slashthedrabbleTakes place immediately following Captain America - Winter Soldier





	

Bucky spent two weeks hiding in a burnt out house in a neighborhood where no one would notice. Sirens screaming by during the night, the day almost quiet enough that he could sleep. An hour or two before jerking instantly awake, his hands gripped his gun. His back against the corner as he looked around the room for the source of the sound. The voices in his mind. Sometimes he could close his eyes, return to the dreamless black. More often he knew that was all he was going to get.

The gun wasn’t his, he didn’t remember where he’d picked it up. His clothes were different and he didn’t know where he found them. He could only hope that his cave brain had the sense to burn or bury his uniform.

His head, at the best of times; was full of rats. Skittering feet and looping tails. Long whiskers tickling and teasing at his memories and he’d lose hours just sitting. The smell of summer in Brooklyn filling his senses; heated asphalt and exhaust overcoming the charcoal, mildew and mold that surrounded him. The feel of smooth skin under his hands - the boy before the man. Eyes and hair always so bright it made him squint. Even now. 

Another tickle, another country and he was in a tent. Canvas and snow, cold blowing in and around but they’d zipped their sleeping bags together to stay warm. The boy now a man and he took as much, as _good_ as he gave. 

At worst; it was snakes in a box. Slithering and biting, rattling and pushing against his skull until he wept. Bent over his knees, sobbing and gagging as flashes of red splashed behind his eyelids. The muzzle of the gun pressed hard to his temple, leaving a bruise. Death and death and death. Most of it was from a distance, through a scope. Too many were up close, too many he’d felt. He could feel. Blood on his hands, on his face. His chest, under his fingernails. All over his soul. 

The things he’d done. The things he’d seen. What he had left behind. So many years of it and there was that shiver of anger, of betrayal. 

No one came for him. His squadron, his family ... the man with blood on his mouth, his forehead, his uniform as the carrier fell apart around them. His whispered words from their shared past stopped Bucky’s mission.

Bucky dragged him from the water and stared. The lips he remembered kissing, the body he remembered tasting, touching. Fucking. Where had this man been when they’d sent the serpents into his brain, when they’d made him Death. When the pain hollowed him, left him empty of everything but the kill. 

In the museum he read about himself. The life he lived and died. The rats pushed his memories through barbed wire and bayonets. He couldn’t go back. He had no future. His only choice was to disappear.

Forget the promise.


End file.
